Jay Carney Accuses Fox News' James Rosen of 'Creating an Exchange for Fox' on Benghazi

#Benghazi, will not go away. One role we can serve is to help keep it alive by contacting House members and letting them know we still care... Over and over again!

In this political climate, the only thing that can touch the lies of the media is for us to be involved with the politicians.
Chalice

Published on Oct 17, 2013

Fox News National Security Correspondent James Rosen put in an appearance at Thursday's White House Daily Briefing to engage Press Secretary Jay Carney on the topic of Republican Congressional investigations into Benghazi. Carney, who has been increasingly eager to call out what he sees as partisan questioning, accused Rosen of "creating an exchange for Fox," to which Rosen shot back "what we are engaged in here is for the record, not for Fox."

Rosen, who was the subject of Justice Department subpoenas in the leak investigation into then-State Department contractor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, is not a regular at White House briefings, but joined network-mate Ed Henry Thursday in order to question Carney about Benghazi. The nearly ten-minute exchange ended with a persistent Rosen being told "I think we're done here, James" by Carney as he exited the briefing room.

While Rosen is correct that everything in the White House briefings is "for the record," Carney's also correct, in that if the point was simply to get Carney on the record, Ed Henry could as easily have asked the same questions. It's also true, though, that most TV reporters' questions are at least partially for the purpose of creating clips for use in news programming, which is why you'll often hear very similar questions asked five or six times at each briefing. All of these exchanges are "created" for some TV network.

However, Carney's broader point appears to be that the issue of Congressional investigations into Benghazi has been covered by Fox News in much greater proportion than other outlets, and that Rosen's line of questioning was tailored to that editorial sensibility, and to that audience.